I hate big tech controlling social media. I desperately want social media to be federated.
I really love community-driven social media like Reddit. Lemmy feels… too small. I really loved that Reddit let me jump into any niche hobby, and instantly I had a community. Lemmy, you’ll be lucky if that community even exists, and if it does, chances are nobody has posted in ages.
On the other hand, Lemmy is full of political content lately. I’ve basically been doom scrolling everything US election-related, and it’s really starting to take a toll on my mental health.
I know I can filter content. I know I can post and be the change I seek. Yet, it feels like an uphill battle.
Not sure what the point of this is, or if it’s even the right community to vent about this. I just really want to replace Reddit, but I find myself going back more and more (e.g. r/homekit is very active compared to Lemmy version).
Here’s something I learned, don’t be afraid to block. Political sub you don’t want? blocked. Person shouting about China in a cat sub? blocked.
Also add blacklisted keywords, it cuts down on politics a ton
We have to be the thing we want to see out in the world. If we want open source communities and an internet free of corporate influence then we have to do the work required to build them. It’s not going to happen by magic.
Well you should come hang out with us at Out of Context Comics! Not a lot of politics but a lot of gay innuendo. A lot.
Love it! Subscribing
Welcome aboard!
Lurk on Reddit. Post on Lemmy.
hell yeah
Well Lemmy is a possible replacement for Reddit but, putting aside my strong biais for Lemmy, it doesn’t have to be a Reddit replacement for everyone and it is still building itself up. Here is a few tips to improve your time in hope you’ll find on the fediverse the space you look for :
- Try write post on dead looking community. Follower counts have a hard time synchronizing btw instances. A lot of people may be waiting for some activity to happened.
- Try opening niche community in their original instance. The posts wrote on a distance community before the first lemming of your instance opens it are invisible and must be added one by one (by entering it URL in your instance search function). You might found interesting content you missed.
- Try reposting content you see on Reddit on Lemmy. Copy-Paste it and add something like “R*eddit content - OP : @XXX@reddit.com” somewhere in the post. You might not have as much response as OP but it can stir up interesting conversation.
- Try to make an account on the twittoverse (Mastodon, *key…). The community on the microblogging side of the fediverse is much bigger and diverse. You will be able to boost your lemmy content and link it to hashtag so more people may see it. Answer to the original post will even show up on Lemmy. But second level comments will not fediverse well.
- Try to post articles, general question or to do anything to bring some animation to your niche community. Regularity in low engagement content will still bring people that will sooner or later start to engage.
- Don’t hesitate to crosspost any related post to your favorite community. Community are silos, instances are silos and the lemming populating is very fragmented. By linking communities together, you’ll bring people with the same hobbies than you to the community they did not find out yet. -Don’t hesitate to answer at old post. Us lemmings don’t have enough activity to complain about people writing back months later, especially in niche community.
Cheers!
Thank you for taking the time to write a thorough and actionable response! Great tips!
You’re welcome
Yeah I want to get off Reddit but this place is small and is very political. It’s a tiny echo chamber. A very very small one.
Imagine taking the technical and stubborn creme of the crop redditors and that’s who’s mostly on lemmy. It used to be those who wanted an open source community, but it got it’s user bumps during the reddit exodus. I would have never heard of lemmy if it wasn’t for the fact I used reddit exclusively through the redditsync app. And when that shut down I came here naturally on the backbone of the developer going here.
I’ve been here since. The community isn’t bad. I still get responses on niche things like gardening and fish tank related issues I had. It’s just 3 comments vs 30. But somehow it’s better. Because on reddit I can’t even get a post posted half the time, and the other half I find out I’m banned from that sub because of a comment I made years ago on a completely unrelated post on a sub I don’t even know.
It’s still a tiny echo chamber like it was a couple months ago when I cut back on Lemmy use. It can get pretty repetitive and boring to read. I came back to Reddit because the user base was larger and there were more perspectives I could hear from.
I am still using both. I have never been a big poster, but I like to think I can engage in discussion on just about anything,except Linux, and I really try (but fail) to avoid political shit, and so I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.
But I’ll keep coming back, I’ll hopefully contribute in some mental way to the growth, and perhaps niche subs can grow in popularity. One of my personal favorite subs on Reddit is homeimprovement, and it’s simply a matter of quantity as far as getting it just as good here.
I like lemmy because I can’t doomscroll
You’re right in one sense; the community is small and can have an echo chamber effect like any “small village.” But you can also try other instances, or other Fediverse things or start your own. It goes like this; Reddit had success because they served you interesting things on a silver platter, using extensive venture capital to make it as slick and addictive and popular as possible. Lemmy is not built on capital, at least not on the same scale as Reddit; it is built on labor. You gotta decide what your ideal is.
Unfortunately, there’s no easy way around it. Fediverse is small, and while we should always encourage people’s migration, it will probably remain small for the time being.
And freedom to express everything combined with people learning their behavior on algorithmic content will be an issue until a strong Fediverse culture is established. The times of pioneers are over, the times of “truly a place for everyone” are not yet there, and in between, we have a very weird mixture, sometimes bringing out the worst of many people.
I hope Fediverse will survive through this phase, and if yes, bright times will be ahead. But it will take a lot of work. Many non-political communities have already started blocking political content, and for the time being, I believe that’s for the better. People need a place to chill and have a corner of their own, not face what they ran away from in the first place.
Yes Lemmy is smaller and doesn’t have instantly fully formed communities. Reddit has been around for almost 2 decades. Lemmy is newer, smaller, and actively fights the sorts of shenanigans that Reddit initially used to get big.
If you want more niche activity, make posts and interact with posts. Lemmy is user driven- that means you. It isn’t a giant megasite where you can just expect to be a passive receiver of endless content.
I once read somewhere that mentioned how Lemmy is actually bigger than reddit was at the same age. I don’t know if that is true or not but that’s pretty cool if it is and I think it means Lemmy is on a good track.
The difference was that Digg used to be the site. Then Digg ticked off all their users and 90% of them migrated to reddit, which was already available.
Reddit had its dumpster fire moment over the last couple years, but there was no available place for everyone to quickly migrate over to other than Lemmy, and it didn’t really happen. Lemmy is a bit harder to get used to and figure out, so we missed out on a huge migration.
So its doubtful that lemmy will ever expand out like reddit did. Not for a long time, anyhow. It will be great if we make it to a couple million active users. At that point, I’d be totally content. Things get too sloppy once you go over 10 million users, it seems.
I was their in reddit beginning. There were no initial shenanigans. It was a good place and existed at just the right time, when people wanted to leave Digg because it was turning into a dumpster fire, similar to what reddit has done.
When reddit started turning to shit there just wasn’t anything for the masses to migrate to that was available other than here. Problem is that here isn’t as simple to get into. In lemmy, the learning curve is slightly higher than “bare minimum”.
Sort of, but it didn’t really work. Reddit existed in 2005, but wasn’t popular. It only became popular in 2010 after all of Digg went to it, because it was pretty much a Digg clone, but with owners who weren’t Digg.
I’ve presented you with the proof that early Reddit was populated with large numbers of sockpuppet accounts by the owners, creating whole cloth communities to draw in users, which is not something that is happening on Lemmy.
The entire reason the Digg mass exodus was viable was people leaving Digg found these “preexisting” Reddit communities and felt more comfortable joining in.
Lemmy doesn’t have that socketpuppet population to springboard with, so growth is slower and unpopulated communities are not falsely full of fake users.
I hung out on reddit long enough over the previous couple of years when people were up in arms to leave. It wasn’t the lack of subs or community size that kept people away. It was simply that it was harder to figure out how to get up and going. You can’t just go to lemmy.com, create a name and password, and start doing stuff. Further still is that now people want an apk for phone browsing and particularly when the masses wanted to leave reddit, there was also no “use this apk and its easy”. Plus, creating an instance is much more work than creating a subreddit.
It was never about the size of the website already appearing to be in place. Lemmy just has a harder entry fee. It keeps lemmy at a lower user base in the same way every subscription service in existence knows it wants to make things super easy to sign up, but time intens8ve and difficult to cancel. Because it takes a bit of effort, lots of people don’t get around to doing it.
You can’t just go to lemmy.com, create a name and password, and start doing stuff.
Go to https://lemm.ee/
Have a look around, see if the content and the formatting is appealing to you, register an account if you want to be able to curate your feed further
Go to https://lemm.ee/c/newcommunities@lemmy.world to see communities (equivalent of subs) that might be interesting to you.
Use Voyager as a mobile app: https://www.lemmyapps.com/Voyager. When they ask for your “instance”, use “lemm.ee”
If you want more choices for apps, have a look at https://www.lemmyapps.com/
I think the Lemmy devs political stance and instances such as hexbear are more detrimental to the success of the platform than the entry bar.
Edit: Discuit is a centralized site, and now has 209 weekly active users: https://discuit.net/DiscuitMeta/post/OiU8YjZ_
This is great for people looking now, but the info, the apks, and the knowledge to get there was less known or not very good a year or so ago.
Also, I’m personally a big fan of “thunder” for my phones lemmy apk. It’s awesome.
On Lemmy you feel like your voice is heard more because it’s smaller, IMO.
I hear you dude! 😜
I like it as a platform but the userbase just isn’t there.
They said, in a thread that has literally tens of thousands of words in replies.
you gotta realize reddit didn’t just “appear” one day with those obscure niche topics built out. There is a network effect large communities have. We need hundreds of thousands more members before that is possible.
I think you probably weren’t there for early reddit, but most of the active posters here on Lemmy were. It was tiny. Like Lemmy.
You can’t force those niche communities to exist here. It doesn’t work. But what you can do is post and create valuable content. and eventually we may get there.
It’s so weird to me that people are so spoiled today that they feel inconvenienced when there isn’t limitless content in their niche fields of interest being served to them on a platter every single day.
Those of us who remember the before times can tell you that the absolute best of a platform comes before that point. I’m sure it’s lovely getting your full every single second, but the best conversation, the best education, the best introspection comes when you’re allowed a few minutes between stimuli to think.
I feel like “Old woman yells at cloud” but I really feel like our younger folks who crave endless, mindless interaction, don’t know what they miss out on.
I can’t blame them, because they’ve been conditioned to be consumers of content. While they idealize creators, they also put up barriers in their minds as the the level of quality a given comment, piece of content, whatever, needs to achieve before getting involved.
I try and think of Lemmy as the equivalent of the Linux. We’re just going to have lower adoption because there isn’t a corporate juggernaut behind us promoting this thing.
But if people really want to know why reddit was able to become reddit, it happened here yesterday with cats. It’s bean memes. Its Stör. Its us developing culture of our own as a community.
So its fine. I’m not too worried. We’re doing great.
I didn’t get a wall of voids and honestly, I feel a little left out lol.
Maybe that’s part of it, but it’s not just that.
For example, I preordered a Nanoleaf Sense+ switch, which just shipped for everyone on the preorder. I’m excited to hear other people’s experiences with the product as it uses direct communication with lights via the Thread network.
If I go to Reddit’s r/nanoleaf, there are enough members that I see people posting about Sense+ within a few days of the product shipping.
And it’s not just consuming. I want to help people set up the switch too. For example, Nanoleaf has a very confusing menu in the app that took me a while to figure out. I saw someone else with the exact same issue and left a helpful comment.
Seems to be a good topic for a thread on !homeimprovement@lemmy.world ?
This is usually how it goes. The larger communities keep growing until they can branch off into the more niche ones.
Doesn’t seem that obvious, some people in the comments here point out that they prefer to have a dedicated community for their niche topic rather than posting on a generic community
And a lot of those people arrived when those communities were already built up on reddit.
This seems to be a type of post that keeps popping up more and more. Some people are venting and mourning their loss of reddit, which I get… but others have a sense of entitlement, of wanting to have things without needing to work for it. They want someone else to put in the blood, sweat and tears and be the ones to reap the benefits.
Imagine pilgrims coming to early North America and no one wanting to participate once they arrived, because no pre-built cities exited? We wouldn’t have a country in the US (though I’m sure that must have been the attitude of some)
Pardon me for wanting to have a place where I can discuss my hobbies, I guess.
You can still do that.
Start the conversation. That’s what we all did, and where these communities got their start.
I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried. Posting a bunch of threads out into the void doesn’t suddenly manifest a like-minded community to reply to and engage with those threads. It won’t truly be viable until there’s a much larger userbase to begin with.
And honestly, it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.
it just comes across as patronizing to say the only reason my hobbies don’t have traction here must be because I didn’t try hard enough.
It is absolutely patronizing for people to say that. And you are right to feel that way.
Maybe think about it like this. I collect and propagate one species of orchid as a hobby. Its an obscure species among orchids, which are relatively obscure plants among plant collectors, and plant collecting is a relatively obscure thing among people growing with and interacting with plants, which is a relatively obscure thing in the grand scheme of all things.
So lets assume a 5% conversion rate at every step: There are maybe 40k active users on lemmy?
So of 40k users about 2k are into plants.
Of the 2k users into plants in some manner, about 100 are into plant collecting.
Of the 100 users into plant collecting, maybe 5 are into collecting orchids.
And of the five users collecting orchids, I’m the quarter of one user who collects Vanilla planifolia and Vanilla planifolia var. tahitensis.
So if I acknowledge this, I’ve got a couple options. First, I could just start a vanilla community. But I really shouldn’t expect other people to participate, because I recognize that I’m probably the only vanilla grower on all of lemmy. If I do that, I should probably think about it as a place more like a personal blog or place for me to record my story. And maybe over time, it can grow in popularity and get a following.
Alternatively, I can share my exploits on larger subs, like c/plants, where I’ll probably do well because there are more users, and the content I’m sharing is interesting and unique because so few people are into/ do what I do.
So if you can adjust your exceptions, there absolutely is a place for you here. But we’re the flea market to Reddit’s mall of America approach. But remember, Reddit too started as a flea market. It was a place for internet weirdos with weird hobbies and senses of humor. But appreciate you’ll be a lone diamond here, but that gives you a chance to stand out.
Could vanilla orchids do well as a houseplant? I’m zone 7b/8a so I’ve had success playing around with semi tropical plants, but I don’t have greenhouse space to overwinter frost intolerant plants.
I grew them in green houses for years. If you can keep the humidity high (60%+), they’ll grow, but you’ll won’t get flowers.The leaves will be very diminished, and the plant less robust. Two things very different about vanilla compared to other orchids: they aren’t an epiphyte; and they grow as a vine.
Typically, in the wild (and many of my cuttings are from ‘adventures’ to abandoned plantations) Vanilla has a “grow and fall over” vegetative habit. It grows tendrils down to the soil (which turn to accessory roots) following a support plant or structure. Its also extremely apically dominant. It barely branches, and it really, really wants to grow ‘straight up’. It takes a substantial amount of training to get them to grow sideways. That was many words to say they do best in high humidity, regular potting soil, and need lots of space (especially vertically).
If you are still interested let me know or DM me. I’d be happy to send some cuttings.
because I didn’t try hard enough.
That would be pretty patronizing if I said that, I agree.
What I did say was, you need to start the conversation.
However, now that I’ve looked at your account… unless you have a secondary account to the one I’m replying to now, the whole 21 posts you’ve made over multiple communities, and that being your whole history for a year’s worth of account… maybe I am saying “try harder.” If you want to feel like that’s patronizing, that’s fine.
All the bigger communities on lemmy (like tenforward) happened because first one person posted a lot, every day. And then they were joined by others. And then the community they were in had drama so they moved to tenforward, but my point is, if you want people to talk to you about something, a single post once in a while doesn’t do it. You gotta pump out content, post memes, attract people who want to be part of the conversation. Reply to like, everyone. Be friendly. Be engaging.
Okay, now you literally are saying I didn’t try hard enough.
This is not my first account (it’s also not anywhere close to a year old, not sure where you got that idea). I’d tried to start a few communities over on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.
I don’t have the energy to spend several hours a day flooding threads nobody will engage with, just in the hopes that if I keep it up forever eventually one of them might get a reply or two. It’s not that easy, and it’s patronizing to act like that’s such a simple solution I should’ve thought of.
This is what I was getting at: communities don’t come from nothing. You’re welcome to stay where they’re pre-built for you but posting endless content is how communities get started.
When I was younger, I was someone who ran a few of those communities myself. If it’s patronizing to say you didn’t try hard enough (while you’re also declaring you, yourself, don’t have the energy to do it) then it should be less patronizing, but still fair, to say… if you don’t want to do it, don’t complain that someone else isn’t doing it for you.
If you don’t want to be on Lemmy, then don’t. Come check back in periodically to see if someone else had the energy to do what you didn’t. It’s fair to say you don’t want to do the work. Whining someone else isn’t doing it doesn’t get it done faster.
And how do you think that larger userbase is going to come into existence?
Not overnight, that’s for sure. It’s going to take a long time to ever get that kind of critical mass.
What I’m trying to get at is that people need to stay for a critical mass to be reached instead of going “there’s nobody here” and leaving.
Which particular niche topic(s) is it?
Fighting games and Riichi Mahjong. !fgc@lemmy.world and !mahjong@lemmy.nerdcore.social exist, but are pretty barren. I’d also previously tried to start communities for them on kbin.social, but that’s gone now.
Also arcade-style versus puzzle games, but those are so dead these days that even on Reddit they didn’t have an active sub.
I hope you get more engagement in the community. But you should probably engage more with others posts as well.
are pretty barren.
Have you tried promoting the fighting games community on !newcommunities@lemmy.world and generic games communities? That could help you find at least a few other people who would like to discuss that topic in the fgc community
Also, !fedigrow@lemm.ee is a community dedicated to community growing, we have regular threads to discuss “shouting into the void”
A lot of people want that, it’s not that easy to find and it never was.
We just got spoiled by the good days of the internet.
Yeah, the reason I like Lemmy is because it reminds me of old reddit. Like old old reddit, before the Digg migration.
Reading the comments here made me realize something.
It’s nice to have good content for niche communities that you enjoy but that’s always been a tall order. As in, a lot of things have to go right to get that organic community feeling and I’ve honestly always thought of it as a privilege and not a right.
I’ve seen plenty of communities die for various reasons or just been in a position where I didn’t have passion to go and talk about my niche interests.
So what’s my point? Niche communities are the icing on the cake of a good platform. When we mostly have for profit platforms and little main stream interest in standardized alternatives, you got to be more realistic.
Don’t let your desire for something you want right now ruin something you can have in the future. At one point r/homekit didn’t exist, didn’t stop you from not caring.
